Evi takes on Siri for your artificial affection

Apple's Siri hasn't exactly taken the world by storm but, until now, there hasn't really been a decent rival to steal its intelligent assistant crown. But, with Evi - created by Cambridge based developers True Knowledge - now available for both iOS and Android devices, we may just have a decent contender.

Evi's makers claim that the app boasts "revolutionary artificial intelligence" using "cutting edge semantic search technology" and, most importantly, state that it is able to answer questions based in the UK; a hurdle that Siri has yet to fully overcome.

"Evi differs from standard search engines in that she does not simply trawl the internet to find websites which match the given phrase," state True Knowledge. "She is able to not only understand natural language, allowing users to speak or type a question as if they were speaking to another person, but she is also able to understand the desire behind the question and present the essential information.

"[For example] Evi....will present a list of coffee shops nearby, their distance from your location as well as maps. Evi knows what you want and is able to give you the exact information you need."

Evi has speech recognition tech from Nuance built in and can integrate with services like Yelp, Google Places, Parkopedia and TopTable. True Knowledge sees the possibilities as "unlimited", stating that its apps will be hitting cars, TVs and other mediums in the future. What it won't give you, at the moment at least, is device control (memos, texts, calendar entries - that sort of thing).